STFU Parents Blogger Defends Her Lampooning of Oversharing

ABC News

ABC News Blogs•October 5, 2012

The creator of the STFU Parents blog, which lampoons parental oversharing on social media sites, defends her website against attacks by parents upset at being mocked for what STFU Parents playfully calls "over-sharenting."

Fed up with the endless chatter and pictures on social media from the mom-world of sonograms, onesies and potty training, New Yorker Blair Koenig, 30, launched STFU Parents in 2009, seeing it as a place for people to vent frustration and share some laughs over the "too-much-information" parenting posts on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. What's TMI? Posts about misplaced kid poop, detailed delivery room updates and photos parents might think are cute but might not be meant for the whole world to see.

The blog generates a whopping 1.5 million page views a month for Koenig - who is not a mother herself.

Melissa Lawrence, CEO of Cloudmom.com, which provides practical advice and tips for moms, says that the posts on the STFU Parents blog aren't intended for Koenig's audience.

"I do think she's a bit harsh and crossing the line in taking these comments out of the context in which they were made within the community that they were made," Lawrence said.

On Thursday, Koening appeared on "The Ricki Lake Show" to defend STFU Parents.

"I don't want to poke fun at any one particular person. It's more like I'm highlighting what I'm seeing as a trend," she said.

She told ABC News that "when we don't edit ourselves. … We start drifting from sharing into oversharing. … Sometimes, particularly on social media sites, less is more."

While Koenig has plenty of empathizers, the etiquette of parenting through the lens of social media is still up for debate.

"I think that a lot of what you see within these parenting communities are people that are sharing experiences that help them to know how to deal with them," Lawrence said. "There are times when these 'gross stories' can actually have relevance."